Powerful marketing automation. True sales-marketing integration for B2B
May 21, 2019

Powerful marketing automation. True sales-marketing integration for B2B

Nicolas Costa Ossa | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Enterprise

Overall Satisfaction with Pardot

We use Pardot as our main marketing automation tool. All our online marketing activities are connected to Pardot, that way we funnel all data through the application. Pardot is only used by the Marketing and Sales teams. The main problem is solving for us is that we used to have zero visibility into our Marketing big picture. Since we started using Pardot, we channel everything through there so we have complete date about our marketing campaigns, leads, ad performance, etc.
  • Lead scoring. We associate prospects actions with a score. That way we have a system to know which prospects are more likely to close when.
  • Email campaigns. You can set up not a single email campaign, but a set of them, all interconnected, so you can design (and control) your customer journey.
  • Lead management. By having Pardot as a part of our Salesforce instance, you have a complete integration between Marketing and Sales. You know where the lead is sitting all the team, and you can take action on the real-time data you see. The marketing team will nurture leads up until they are ready for a sales representative to jump in.
  • The implementation can be a little rough. Unlike other modern systems, like HubSpot, Pardot will require more attention, in both implementation and configuration. Your team will have to study and learn how to use it. It will take time to get it right. I highly recommend you do this process with an implementer.
  • Visibility. Clear visibility on where our prospects or leads are. When are they ready for more content, or when are they ready for a sales representative.
  • Today we know what are the best performing online marketing campaigns we put out there. We can double down on the ones that work, or we can turn off the ones that are underperforming.
  • Marketing and Sales integration. We used to work in silos. Today it feels like just one single team. The customer journey is one and we all work together as a team to bring the wins in. Pardot is the tool that allowed us to work like that, as a team, by delivering complete data of a lead while they consume our content.
I think overall Pardot is a more complete product. It is definitely easier to implement, learn and use. Infusionsoft's learning curve is quite tough. So I really saw how we assimilated Pardot easier and faster than Infusionsoft. The fact that is deeply integrated with Salesforce is a huge differentiator for a B2B model where you need a sales team to finish the job.

Maybe Pardot's biggest disadvantage against competitors is pricing. Pardot is more expensive, at least than Infusionsoft. Way more than double. Can't remember the exact number but I'm sure Pardot is a few times more expensive than Infusionsoft.
If your business needs an intensive online content strategy and you are at least a three-person Marketing team, you can probably benefit greatly from Pardot. Especially if you are in a B2B model.

If you are putting a lot of content out there, in multiple places (online), you'll need something to help you automate and work smarter. Because is not only the tough work of developing the content and do proper distribution but the data gathering from those efforts and understanding that data to act upon it. Pardot helps you throughout the whole customer journey.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud Feature Ratings

WYSIWYG email editor
Not Rated
Dynamic content
Not Rated
Ability to test dynamic content
Not Rated
Landing pages
8
A/B testing
Not Rated
Mobile optimization
10
Email deliverability reporting
10
List management
10
Triggered drip sequences
10
Lead nurturing automation
10
Lead scoring and grading
10
Data quality management
10
Automated sales alerts and tasks
10
Calendaring
10
Dashboards
10
Standard reports
10
Custom reports
10
API
Not Rated
Role-based workflow & approvals
10
Customizability
10
Integration with Salesforce.com
10

Using Pardot

8 - They represent the Marketing and sales function, so it's the whole Marketing and Sales teams: VP of sales and marketing, sales director, sales regional manager, sales reps, marketing director, marketing coordinator, lead generation specialist, content specialist, social media expert.
2 - This is a professional marketer who had to study the system deeply and learn how it works. It can take months to learn it. We used a Pardot implementor to do this process along with someone who helped us throughout
  • email automated campaigns
  • campaign reporting
  • lead scoring
  • connected campaigns
  • Predictive analytics
  • Bulk social-media posting
It is powerful and a complete product.
It demands you learn it as an in-house skill.
It is expensive, so not all companies can actually get it.